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Orson Welles’s Oscar Has a New Owner

LOS ANGELES —The Orson Welles Oscar went to the highest—and unidentified — bidder for $861,542, the Nate D. Sanders auction house said Tuesday evening. Welles received the Oscar in 1942 for his work on the script for “Citizen Kane.” It was thought to be lost and later replaced. But eventually the original turned up in the hands of a cinematographer who said he had received it from Welles as a gift, and, after a court fight, it was turned over to Welles’s daughter Beatrice. When the original first went on the block, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences went to court to try to stop the sale, but lost. Sotheby’s later tried to sell it, but ended that effort when an undisclosed reserve price was not met. And, now, finally the Oscar has been sold in an auction that, according to Sanders, included an underbid from the magician David Copperfield. “I’m proud to have represented this fantastic award to the cinema collecting community,” Nate D. Sanders, the auction house owner, said in a statement that was circulated late Tuesday.

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Cara Buckley is your guide on the red carpet to the news and the nonsense of awards season, covering the Golden Globes, the Oscars and more. The Carpetbagger will take a look at films and the people who make and star in them. She's joined by Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes in Los Angeles, Larry Rohter on foreign-language films and documentaries, Mekado Murphy on the technical craft of filmmaking and Rachel Lee Harris on costume design. Tips are always welcome.